Cold calculus of Maine's 3-way race

Here’s how bizarre Maine’s Senate race has gotten lately: Republicans are actively promoting the Democratic nominee, who’s not even endorsed by her own party’s Washington establishment. All the while the supposedly prohibitive front-runner, a registered independent, is suddenly looking beatable after coming under assault from the right and the left.

Not only that, Republicans are hoping this head-spinning scenario in the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe will boost their shaky prospects of capturing the Senate on Election Day.

Text Size

-

+

reset

The GOP’s playbook is a triple bank shot: First prop up the Democrat, Cynthia Dill; then knock down front-running independent Angus King several pegs; then hope their own candidate, Charlie Summers, can slip through to victory.

Improbable as it seems, the strategy is showing some signs of success, putting Democrats in Washington increasingly at odds with Maine Democrats who are pushing Dill’s candidacy.

Indeed, as King has seen his popularity drop amid a barrage of negative attacks from GOP-aligned groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, some Republicans are indirectly — or overtly — touting Dill as the true Democrat in the race.

Already, a GOP-aligned independent expenditure group, Maine Freedom, has touted Dill’s record in TV ads; the Maine Republican Party has sent direct mail to Democratic voters pointing out Dill’s “proud progressive” record; and the National Republican Senatorial Committee has called her “liberal” in an ad that also slams King.

Even Summers is talking up his Democratic foe, calling her in an interview “an incredibly articulate spokesman for the issues Democrats in Maine are concerned about.”

King is none too pleased about the GOP’s tactics.

“I think it stinks,” King told POLITICO. “It’s a perversion of the system.”

Summers, the Maine secretary of state, is still a significant underdog in a race that has been controlled by King, a former two-term independent governor who hasn’t held elective office in a decade but is counting on the state’s culture of moderate politics and voters’ disgust with both parties to propel him into office.

But increasingly, the race has centered on the question of whether Dill could siphon enough of the Democratic vote from King to give Summers a plurality of the vote in the left-leaning state. The tactics are similar to ones employed in the three-way 2010 governor’s race won by Republican Paul LePage, and Dill’s support has ticked up and King’s lead has dropped to as low as single digits in some surveys.

The writer of this article hasn't looked at any of our Maine polls. Angus is ahead 2 to 1 against Summers. We Mainers are wise to the lies that Summers is spouting in his ads and speeches. They are not working. Angus King will win the Snowe seat and the Republicans will either try to woo him with compromises, which of course is against their "principles", or lose him to the Democrats.